


A Pretty Little Girl

by padawanhilary



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Fights, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padawanhilary/pseuds/padawanhilary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson has been tracking her for months, and he has a couple of reasons for being tired of the chase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pretty Little Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackAndaHat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackAndaHat/gifts), [sorcha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorcha/gifts).



_Disclaimer: I know just enough about Black Widow’s canonical backstory to be dangerous. This is largely speculative and based on the Marvel movieverse. Beta work has been done by the lovely Sorcha, but I made edits afterward.  
_

 

  
  
Coulson taps his earpiece. “Be ready to move. All eyes on the target, no exceptions. Snipers one, two and six on me. Gas at the ready. Hand-to-hand teams flank the building at two, four, eight and ten o’clock. Air assault, hold position until we need you, and _no lethal force._ There are a few ways we can lose today, and that’s the biggest one. No one moves until I signal, and for all that’s holy, keep Barton away from this. I want him in lockdown until this is over. Am I absolutely clear?” He waits for periodic confirmation as he runs through his laundry list of orders and then pulls out his handgun, checking to make sure he’s got a stun round chambered.  
  
The last time he’d had command of a small army, it was to deal with a slightly larger one in the Nicaraguan jungle. That had been headed up by a warlord poised to take control of a smuggling ring so huge that it could have shown the entire “war on drugs” to be the farce that it actually was...if only it had been drugs they were smuggling. The alien technology poised to move across two continents and possibly the Pacific Rim was worth the deployment of a crew two or three times the size of the one he’d quietly trained up and sent in.  
  
This operation is, too. More than, actually. But if he can’t do this with three snipers (and three on standby), two tear gas cannons, four air assault teams and eight spec-ops ground troops, then he’s not much of an agent.  
  
After all, it’s just a “pretty little girl.”  
  
That’s what everyone keeps saying, anyway. But after what Phil Coulson’s seen this pretty little girl--who is in fact a very special nineteen-year-old Russian superspy--do to several of his men (and two women), he’s not taking any chances. And that doesn’t even _address_ what she’s done to Clint.  
  
He gives the signal, and the snipers take position. The warehouse is so perfect as to be cliche, with massive crates and train cars stacked in hulking piles, the windows either high, high up toward the beams or low enough to look through while sitting in a chair. There won’t be any shooting through the stacks, not with the ammo they’ve got, and she’s smart. Possibly smarter than he is, though he hopes not. What he’s really got on her is years’ worth of experience in hunting people just like her. That, and the fact that he’s a good guy.  
  
He opens the heavy, squealing door and steps into the cavernous space, and as it swings shut behind him, the whole building seems to rattle with the echo of metal slamming.  
  
“What would you prefer to go by?” he calls, peering through a sun shaft’s swirling dust motes and then in between a set of stacks. “I’ve seen ‘Natalia,’ ‘Natasha,’ ‘Nat,’ and, for some reason, ‘Nanci.’ Frankly, I like ‘Black Widow’ best, though you’re a little young to have a title like that, don’t you think?”  
  
Her voice is as quiet as it can be given the span of the room and the sheer size of the objects between them. It’s an excellent tactic; the words carry without giving him a real direction to go in. “Aliases are tricky things, Agent." Her voice is feminine, but not small, belying her age. She knows what the hell she's on about, that's for sure. "You play a role long enough, and it gets into your head instead of the way around.” If she’s prickly over his chiding about her age, he can’t tell. He's having trouble telling anything, honestly, so he just lets her go on. “Your boy Clint likes ‘Tasha.’”  
  
_Little girl, you have no idea_ , Coulson thinks, rolling his eyes a little. Clint’s damn near gone over her, and it’s become more of a thing than either of them like to admit. It’s bad enough Coulson has to fight down his own jealousy; he can’t have Hawkeye losing his cool over a wisp of a villain not even old enough to drink--never mind the fact that she cut her teeth on the last frenzied efforts of the KGB. When Coulson gives an order like “Don’t take your eyes off her,” the last thing he wants to hear is “Thank you, sir.”  
  
There’s no sound for a moment, so he moves into the stacks, unbuttoning his jacket and bringing his weapon up. “Is that why we’re here, Miss Romanova?” he asks instead, stalking along a row of crates before whipping around the corner, gun first. “Did the role get into your head?”  
  
The silence this time is just a little satisfying. Natasha wants in, he can feel it, and somehow, though all they’ve done is battle while he tried to take her down, Hawkeye managed to start a crack in her armor. They all know it. Now it’s a matter of netting her before she has second thoughts and disappears again.  
  
“A little too far,” she admits, and now he can hear that she’s close--too close, but he can’t see her. She could be throwing her voice…he looks up, around, and then just keeps moving. If he stops, he’s a goner, especially in here where his people can’t get a clear shot.  
  
He moves around a corner, leading with his weapon again, every nerve on edge. The closer to the center he moves, the darker the shadows grow, the less movement he has. To say she’s an expert at close-range hand-to-hand is like saying Bobby Fischer indulges in a little chess, and there’s nothing in here Coulson can use. Even a stun round could kill her at a range this close, and that’s just on the off-chance he’ll get to aim it. He moves through the center, keeping his eyes on the gaps between the rows, and at the far end, he catches a dark flash of movement. Quickly, he follows after it.  
  
“Listen to me,” he says, talking fast. “I have the authority to offer you asylum. Complete immunity. Whatever they’re using against you, I can make it go away.”  
  
“No, you can’t.” Her tone is softer now. This slick spy, far too young to have as much experience as she does, has managed to work every trace of Russian from her voice. They have recordings of her sounding like she’s from dead in the middle of Mississippi, and one where she’s managed to come off like an Orange County surfer. But she’s giving him pain right now. He can hear it bleeding around the edges of her words. His nerves prickle as she goes on, playing the poor-me card: “You can’t make any of it go away. And they’ll never let me go.”  
  
While she talks, though, he’s zeroing in on a soft shuffle, the sound of a boot not-quite catching on wood--but when he gets there the space is empty, and he looks up too late. Suddenly the gun is being kicked from his grip, and it flies down the stacks to clatter to the wall. He doesn’t quite manage to tap his earpiece before she’s on him, slinging herself down from the crate to kick him full-on in the chest, both feet. He staggers back out of the row, and when she bounds after him, looking like she wants to take his head off with a well-placed punch, he crouches and sweeps out his leg to catch hers. She twists, hits the ground on her left side, her steel-toed boot swinging out to catch him hard on the side of the knee. A gruff cry heaves out of his chest; the pain is excruciating. Before he can get his head together enough to pounce, she’s up again, a deceptively small military-issue handgun trained at his head.  
  
“You can’t beat me at hand-to-hand,” Natasha says, and doesn’t he know it (though it does give him a small amount of pride to see that she’s winded, and whether it be from fear or pain doesn’t really matter). “Your Storm Troopers won’t get anywhere near the doors before I’m gone, your snipers won’t be able to get a bead.” She glances at the upper windows pointedly, and there’s nothing but clear sky from where they’re standing. “You’re sure as hell not going to out-talk me.” She tilts her head, and he spares another thought for her youth as her vivid red curls sway around her face, bravado not quite keeping the nervous flutter out of her tone.  
  
She wants in. And he's going to make it happen.  
  
“You are so much more than ‘just a pretty little girl,’” Coulson says, and he lets her see how awed he is.  
  
“You think I’m pretty?” she asks, sounding mildly surprised.  
  
Abruptly there’s a minuscule sound, a sharp, whining hiss that Coulson isn’t sure he heard until she’s slumping, a slender impact-triggered syringe arrow sticking out of the meat of her upper arm. The gun clatters out of a limp hand, and he rushes to her to keep her from hitting the concrete.  
  
“Damn it,” he mutters as he tugs the arrow out. He hangs his head, shaking it, adopting the posture of a long-suffering supervisor with employees who won’t follow company policy. “Who the hell do I have to fire for letting you get away again?”  
  
“Fury,” Clint says, slinging his bow back on.

Coulson looks up and can just make Clint out in a shadowed corner of the rafters against the wall before he swings down to a steel shelf, a crate, a desk, the floor. “The less you knew--”  
  
“Yeah, I know, Fury’s Rule.” It’s a long-standing joke, and right now it’s not a very good one. Coulson is still crouched over the unconscious Tasha, and he stares down at their long-standing pet project, thoughtful for a moment before he remembers his team--almost unforgivable. “Stand down,” he says into his earpiece. “Target acquired.”  
  
Clint has strolled toward them, and when Coulson looks up at him, he’s torn. He doesn’t know which of them he’d rather slap first, Natasha for her stubborn, childish pride, or Clint for his undying infatuation for the stubborn, childish, prideful one.  
  
“She’s going to hurt you,” Coulson warns quietly, apropos of nothing but also absolutely germane to the subject at hand.  
  
Clint gives him a crooked little grin and shrugs. “You said that about you, too.”


End file.
